MiniSport Laptop Hacker - Vol 2 Remember to send me any hacker tips, resources, addresses, etc that you have so I can include them in subsequent MLH volumes. One correction from Volume 1 has been pointed out to me. The MiniSport is an IBM/XT compati- ble, not an IBM/PC compatible I. MAXIMIZING BOOTUP CONVENIENCE AND MINIMIZING BOOTUP DISK SPACE The bootup sequence on this computer is a little different than you're probably used to. Most MS-DOS computers will boot up on hard drive C:, looking for the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files in the C: root directory. If the CONFIG.SYS isn't there, nothing special happens. If the AUTOEXEC.BAT isn't there, you will be prompted for a time and date entry. The first, biggest difference on the MiniSport, is that you can choose your boot device. Normal MSDOS always tries the first floppy, then goes to hard disk. With the MiniSport, you can choose to boot from 2" floppy disk, the internal ROM disk C:, the external floppy disk plugged in the back, or ROM disk D:. Lots of choices! The least used is probably booting from an external drive. I know where they are available for about $125, but this price is higher than the street price of the entire computer, so not many people have them. Booting from the built in 2" disk is similar, and more economical, since these disks are available for $4-$6 each. With either selection, the disk must be format- ted and prepared with the MSDOS SYS.COM utility. Booting from RAM disk D: gives you some flexibility. You can create and store CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files in the root directory of D:, and they'll be used during bootup. If AUTOEXEC.BAT is not there, you will be asked for date and time. The situation involving CONFIG.SYS is a little bit more complicated, however. If you boot from D:, the boot routine will look for a command processor (COMMAND.COM or one of your choice) on disk D:. It's kind of disappointing to have to keep a copy on disk D:, since there's one permanently available in ROM on disk C:. To use the one over on C:, the non-boot disk, you need to include a SHELL command in CONFIG.SYS. It might look like this: SHELL = C:\COMMAND.COM /P The "P" option tells it to stay permanently in memory; the MSDOS command EXIT will not exit from the command processor. This gave me some trouble because the COMPSEC variable (type SET at the DOS command line to see all variables) was not getting properly set. This may be a bug in the MiniS- port firmware. Does anyone else notice that when booting on C: or D:, specifying or not specifying a command processor with SHELL, COMPSEC doesn't get set correctly? My preference is to boot from ROM disk C:. The unpredictable part is that when booting from C:, AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS from disk D: are used. In this case, no SHELL command is required (hence no CONFIG.SYS file unless you need it for other reasons) since COMMAND.COM is already available on the default boot disk. The only line "necessary" in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file is "d:" to switch over to disk d: for the first command line. Even that is only necessary if you *want* to be over on disk D: Personally, I use no CONFIG.SYS and the following AUTOEXEC.BAT on D: @echo off echo BjM (Opus-OVH) P autoexec.bat path c:\;d:\util;d:\ prompt $p$g verify on d: Let me know what parts of the MLH series are useful to you. Pass on your hints and pointers so others can benefit. 73, Brian, ka9snf@wb7nnf.#spokn.wa.usa or Internet ka9snf@jupiter.spk.wa.us